One other thing (might be more of a preference thing) would be if you set a value for the color channel, when you hit 'ok', it set it. Right now it sets it when you click a different, or hit enter, which is nice. But it might also be nice to have it set on 'ok' as well.

Looking really good! I'm guessing the forum on the site will be overflowing with suggestions when the kickstarter is over, and everyone has been using it.

Will you guys be releasing tutorials? Some of the features in the video looked beyond awesome, but I'm guessing by just fiddling around I haven't discovered half of it.

Also, if you have multiple hidden pieces (like say you have 5 different hands/ mouths that might be switched in during the animation), none of them will be taking "render" time when alpha=0?

Is it also possible to do non bone animation (just rotating images, setting keys), or at least modifying positioning, in case the image didn't rotate perfectly, and you have to make slight adjustments so hard edges don't show?

kappa, yeah stretch goals. I hesitate to promise more stuff until I'm really sure it is doable. The last thing I want is to be working on what was promised loooong after it should have been done. Likely stretch goals would be more runtimes, but it's hard to say which and when they will be done...

Brainman, apparently it only happened in fullscreen mode, which is why we couldn't reproduce it. When a window is the exact size of the screen, Windows does something special so it appears on top of the taskbar. Whatever it does makes it also appear on top of the file dialog. We now make sure the app is never fullscreen while the dialog is open, than we restore fullscreen.

feelingtheblanks, you rock, thanks!

chrismweb, fixed the current value when clicking ok. The forums and emails and messages are already flowing in, it takes about 70% of our time just fielding all those. There will be more docs and more tutorials. For now there are some short quickstart docs here:http://esotericsoftware.com/spine-documentation/

If an image is not visible for a slot, it will not take any rendering power. It an image is just tinted so alpha=0, likely it still costs something to render (this is how OpenGL works).

All animation must use bones. If you want to just manipulate an image, just use a bone with that image attached. Not sure what you mean by hard edges showing?

How do you make an image not visible for a slot? I see on the head of the goblin, it has places for eyes close/ eyes open (so you can probably swap them out, like you would with hands, mouth, ect), but I am not sure how to make one visible/invisible.

The round edge on the arm isn't perfect, so when you rotate it around the joint, it works mostly, but there are some parts where the edges poke out badly. At that point it would be nice to be able to... I guess have the image attached at a slightly different point on the bone... or somehow move it to get rid of bad overlaps. I'm not sure if you can even do it in Flash with their bone system though.

To key an image change, in animate mode at the timeline position you want, click the visibility dot next to the image you want visible. This causes a yellow dot to appear next to the slot for that image. Click this yellow dot to set a key.

In your second image it looks like the image or bone is not in the right place so that the lower arm pivots at the right point. If that were fixed and you still didn't like how the outlines looked when bent at certain angles, you could use an image change. Generally the more outlines you have the more you'll have this sort of problem as things move around.

The Kickstarter has been doing pretty well. We now have ~13 days left and we've just posted stretch goals, which include our plan for how to get Spine runtime support for almost all game toolkits. If you like Spine, be sure to take advantage of the ~50% off you get by obtaining a license before the Kickstarter is over.

Wow nice, up to $55k, congrats! You guys pretty excited? It sounds like a decent amount of money, but it also can be seen as "sales" - with a lot of work needed to add all the stretch goals.

It looks like all the stretch goals will be able to be reached, aside from the free form deformation. Why is that $20k more (Money is probably relative to the time investment- So I'm assuming you're estimating it will take 2-6 months full time to implement)?

I would like to try to deformation on a texture in one of my games- do you have any advice on where to start? Or what your plan would be, if you guys do reach that stretch goal?

Ah, where are you from? I thought you and Mario were both from Austria?

You guys should try to think of a way to make a different type of "basic"/free version for really low end hobby users.

I'm not sure the best way to "neuter" it, to give them some very basic functionality, and entice them to upgrade.

Right now they can do everything in spine- and have to upgrade to actually export to their game (which is a good way of doing it)- but maybe there could be a way that they can only use up to like 3 bones, or 3 graphics- something to limit them a lot, but allow people just exploring it to use it for something basic, and run into a wall early on, but still find use in the free version.

If I did a tutorial for it, only people with the full version can follow along. I think it would open it up to more people using it+ being able to use it, so that you have a lot more people that can "try before they buy", or just use a basic version of it.

Andreas Lowe's Texture packer does a good job with that- he uses a crappy packing algorithm in the free version that wastes a ton of space, but is completely usable (except in a final product, where you need to try to limit memory use, and need efficiently packed textures). So you can use it fully for putzing around, and it works for very basic stuff, but you're severely limited on a normal project.

A lite version that only exported spritesheets up to some limited number of frames per sheet would probably serve the needs of people who are too cheap for/can't afford/don't need the full version anyway. No runtime export, just png snapshots.

As for a tutorial, I'd advise making tutorials for the free version. It's basically advertisement.

I'm from Seattle but got tired of the gray and gloom, so I've been a coding nomad, traveling for a couple years now. I'm currently in Austria, but will have to leave the Schengen area for 90 days soon, not sure where I'll go.

I'm not sure about a lite version. Some people are even more turned off by crippleware than the current approach, which lets you do everything and really explore the app.

Yeah, maybe have a poll or something at some point. Personally, I would rather have some kind of fully, usable demo (for the whole pipeline- animating something and seeing it in my game), then being able to do wonderful animations, and then have to spend money to see if it would actually work.

But, with the demo project files included in the runtime, it at least lets them see someone else's output from spine, and allows them to integrate it, so they can at least try it out there.

But I still think there would be a larger market of even LibGDX users who would be happier with being limited to only animating something stupidly simple, and actually seeing it in their games, becoming more advanced, seeing the value and buying it so they could do more advanced things. Maybe give the option on the current demo version to allow it to export, but with only up to 3 bones, or only 2 frames, but allow it to work completely.

I think it's definitely worth the money, it's a great application, and the animation side + runtimes are two separate products you could have probably charged twice for

And it's very awesome- with 1500 backers, and the program taking 7 months to make, you'll be saving everyone 875 years of trying to code something similar!

Mario and I have worked on OSS for years, but we did work together in San Francisco for a few months about 1.5 years ago.

I've always lived in big cities in the US. Each has their own sort of personality defined by the people. Some places people are generally happier and more friendly than others. Europe is the same way, though the personalities are different than can be found in the US. It feels like life is simpler. It's nice. I do feel like I miss a lot since I only speak English, but my friends take good care of me.

Also it's great that everything is so close together in Europe. A 4 hour road trip or train ride can take you to fantastically different places. Flying is also better, I went from Vienna to Copenhagen for $65 and it only took 1.5 hours. I drove from Seattle to Vegas and it took 2 days non-stop, with absolutely nothing in between.

lol, yeah I am in Arizona, but would like to "move up" to San Fransisco, Oregon, and Eventually check out Germany, France, Italy, Hungary, and maybe explore some other places I don't know much about yet at all.

The best place I have is a 6 hour drive to San Diego, or 2hr drive to the mountains, where trees exist.

Do you currently live in the middle of a big city?

How do you and Mario survive, if you're working on OSS pretty much full time? :p

I checked the price a few hours ago on your website and wanted to buy it. I couldn't find my debit card at first, but found it just now and went back to your site to buy, and now it's up to $55 from $45? Bro... not cool.

Sorry vbrain, any time a price changes someone isn't going to be happy. The $45 was a v1.0 release sale just until the Kickstarter was over.

Mario has a real job, working for The Man. :p I'm a couch surfing bum. Spine is my only income, and it has been a long time since I had any. I'm in Graz, same as Mario, the 2nd largest city in Austria. It's not all that large compared to a US city like LA, but it's still the city.

java-gaming.org is not responsible for the content posted by its members, including references to external websites,
and other references that may or may not have a relation with our primarily
gaming and game production oriented community.
inquiries and complaints can be sent via email to the info‑account of the
company managing the website of java‑gaming.org